


1. Rigging

by Amorette



Series: Ten Things That Never Happened to Willie Loomis [1]
Category: Dark Shadows - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 22:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11655882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amorette/pseuds/Amorette
Summary: They both love old sailing ships. And they are both in hell.





	1. Rigging

**Author's Note:**

> Due to various stresses in life, I have been distracting myself with fan fiction. I have no idea why I suddenly started writing about Willie Loomis but the advantage is, the fandom is SO dead, I don't feel any obligation to finish anything. I have a list of ten things but whether the other nine ever show up is impossible to say.

TEN THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO WILLIE LOOMIS  
1\. RIGGING

Willie studied the chandelier above the dining room table. He had cleaned it up, scraping off ancient wax and dust and cobwebs and polishing the pewter until it gleamed with a dull shine, but the candles it held had never been lit. Barnabas Collins had no use for a dining room. But, for Willie’s purpose, the long mahogany table was perfect.  


He checked his watch, making sure it was only a little past four, and he had adequate time for his task. Lighting each candle carefully, Willie then pulled the chandelier up by its chain so it spread it’s soft light on the papers Willie had spread on the table, the corners weighted down by various objects include several single candlesticks, each holding a lit candle.  


Bending over, Willie carefully traced the lines on the engravings, each delicate line labeled. Foremast, mainmast, mizzenmast, jiggermast, foresail, mizzensail, top gallant, skysails, standing rigging, forestay, backstay. . .  


As Willie carefully read the names, he remembered his first trip at sea. He had been fifteen and thought going to sea was exciting. Maybe even — though the word had never occurred to his teenage self — romantic. He quickly found it to be quite the opposite. The diesel engines stank and he spent the first four days so seasick he couldn’t stand. And then it was hard work and bad food and being the youngest and smallest aboard, it was dangerous, until he learned how to handle himself.  


But this, these engravings, these were what Willie dreamed about. The great sailing ships of another age. That seasickness and bad food were even worse aboard them didn’t dawn on him.  


He had found the drawings in a series of shallow drawers in one of the rooms Barnabas hadn’t bothered to restore. From close-up details to overall diagrams, the papers showed ships; ships, based on the carefully written labels along the bottom, that had been constructed in the Collinsport Ship Yards in centuries past.  


This, the largest of all the drawings, showed the detailed rigging of a four-masted, square-rigged ship once called the “Boreas.” It was completed, said the note, written so carefully it looked almost as if it were set in type, July 12, 1784.  


There were a broken fragments of model ships on the shelves in that room Barnabas ignored. There were even a few intact models contained in dusty bottles. But this drawing, this drawing showed every perfect line, from the crow’s nest to the keel, this had held a magnetic fascination for Willie  


This was ship Willie had wanted to sail on, not the dozen or so diesel ships he had crewed over the years. He could imagine himself, maybe in the blue and white uniforms he had seen in movies, standing at the bow, holding a rope, watching the endless horizon spreading out before him as the shipped dashed through the blue and white of the sea.  


Lanyards and halyards and braces and shrouds and sheets. How could anyone possibly remember what every rope was called? Willie couldn’t imagine being able to learn all those funny names and then have to remember them in the middle of a storm, say, when the commander called out the orders over the howling of the wind and the crash of the waves.  


There was an odd smudge in the bottom of one corner, sticking out from under a bronze candle holder. Willie leaned close, taking care not to let his hair too close to the flame. He had learned that lesson early in his time in the Old House. He carefully nudged the candleholder back to look at what appeared to be a small sketch, drawn in pencil, in contrast to the rest of the precise lines on the paper.  


“Wille?”  


Wille’s heart skipped a beat. He glanced at his wristwatch in horror. More than two hours had passed since he spread these drawings out on the dining room table. More than two hours he had studied each line and label. He only meant to study them for half an hour, no more, so he could put them away and tidy up the dining room before Barnabas came up from the cellar.  


“Willie?” Barnabas’ voice was closer, right behind Willie, who was starting to shake. Oddly enough, his master’s voice didn’t sound angry, the way it usually did, but, if Willie could assign the tone of voice an emotion, he would say Barnabas sounded puzzled. Curious, even. “What are you doing in here?”  


Willie’s mind went completely blank as Barnabas leaned past him to place one long finger on the drawing.  


“The Boreas.” Barnabas said softly, tracing the name with a fingertip.  


There must have been something in Willie’s face because Barnabas continued. “It was the largest ship ever built in the Collins Shipyards. Boreas was the name the Greeks gave to their god of the north winds.”  


“Oh,” said Willie, for lack of anything else to say. His hands were twisting in his apron as he looked at Barnabas, afraid of what he would see there. What he saw confused him. Barnabas simply raised his eyebrows, his face calm.  


“Ah, I found these in that room behind the library and there were ships models in there,” Willie found himself babbling once he regained his voice, “And drawings of these ships and I always thought sailing ships with real sails were cool.”  


He stopped. A faint smile actually seemed to be hovering around Barnabas’s lips. Not the sneering smile or the deceptive smile or the proud smile, but a faint, genuine smile.  


“Cool?”  


“It means neat.” Willie frowned. It was a hard word to define. “Not neat like tidy but fun and interesting and something you wanna do.”  


Impossible as it seemed, Barnabas seemed to smile even more broadly. The unfamiliar expression seem to free Willie’s tongue.  


“I remember a book that I read when I was kid. . .well, I really just looked at the pictures. . .that was full of ships like this and I always kinda wondered what all the ropes and things were called. . .”  


Willie’s voice trailed off as he realized something. Something in Barnabas’ expression. No, not just in the smile or the kindly eyes but the way he stood, not looming over Willie but just standing there, relaxed. For the first time in the months since he had freed the vampire from its coffin, Willie Loomis suddenly realized there had been a real man, once, long ago, named Barnabas Collins. A kind, decent human being who was taken over by a curse that drove him to madness. The thing, the monster, Willie released from its 150 years of imprisonment was, for the moment, completely gone and the man stood there. A man, Willie thought with shock, who didn’t deserve the horrors that had been visited on him.  


If Willie’s revelation showed in his face, Barnabas gave no sign of it. He just continued to smile as he studied the drawing, his finger, as Wille’s had earlier, tracing some of the complex puzzle of the ropes.  


“What’s that,” Barnabas murmured, leaning close. “Ah.”  


Willie looked away from the man standing next to him and saw the smudge. Which, just as Barnabas had entered the room, Willie had decided was a small cartoon, drawn in smudged pencil, of a man tearing at his hair.  


“I. . .I didn’t do that,” stuttered Willie, afraid again.  


“No, you didn’t.” Barnabas laughed, softly. A human laugh. “I did.”  


“What?”  


Barnabas chuckled. That was the sound he made. Willie was sure of it. He chuckled and shook his head, still smiling. “As the heir to the shipyards, my father expected me to memorize all those names for the, sails and things, as you so eloquently put it. I had a few weeks off from my tutors in the summer and thought to spend it sailing, not studying ship terminology. I distinctly remember. . . “  


Barnabas voice trailed off as his expression changed to one of melancholy. “I was hoping to go sailing with Jeremiah that day. We had a little single mast schooner we sailed around and father told me that I couldn’t go until I learned everything about the Boreas.” He looked up at Willie, his eyes bright, not with the spark of madness or the glitter of the curse but, maybe, thought Willie, with something else.  


“That must have been fun,” said Willie a little desperately, wanting to keep hold of the man and prevent the return of the monster. "Sailing, I mean."  


“It was.” Barnabas sighed. “Those models in my father’s office, Jeremiah made most of those. I wasn’t very good at that.”  


“How do you get the ship in the bottle?”  


Willie nearly clapped his hands over his mouth over embarrassment at this question but Barnabas only smiled again.  


“If you look closely, the hull of the ship is always very small, no bigger than the neck of the bottle. You put the rigging together, then fold it down and slip it into the bottle. You a leave a thread hanging out that when you pull it, the rigging is pulled upright. At least, that’s the idea. I don’t think I ever managed to do it correctly.”  


Willie found himself smiling back at Barnabas. “Oh, that’s makes sense. You’d have to be good at delicate things to do that.”  


“Exactly. I wasn’t. I could memorize Shakespeare almost instantly and knew more Latin and Greek than my father, I could solve any algebraic sums set before me, but I could never fit the ship in the bottle.”  


Willie frowned. “Ugh. I can’t imagine having to learn Latin and Greek. I mean, what’s the point? Nobody talks them any more.”  


“Latin, no, but it is the basis for many languages. Believe it or not, Greeks still speak Greek.”  


Willie blew his hair out of his eyes and laughed at himself. “I guess I know that. I’ve been to Greece. Couldn’t understand a word anybody said.”  


“You’ve been to Greece?”  


“Sure. When I was crewing with Jason we went all over the world. I’ve been to Macau and Singapore and Rio and Johannesburg and Istanbul and all sorts of places. But the ships were all diesel steamers. No sails. Although, we couldn’t get stuck when the wind wasn’t blowing, so there was that.”  


“Becalmed,” said Barnabas.  


“Yeah. Somebody once told that when the ships were stuck without any wind, they would put the crew into rowboats and make them tow the boats. Is that true?”  


Barnabas shrugged, turning his attention back to the engraving. “Yes, although I was never on a ship where we were that desperate.”  


Willie stared at Barnabas. “You actually sailed on ships like this, didn’t you?”  


Barnabas chuffed his soft laugh again. “Yes. Father also felt I should understand the business we conducted all around the world so I made one complete trans-navigation when I was about 20.”  


“Trans what?”  


“Trans-navigation.” Barnabas gestured with his hands, ignoring the slight flinch as Willie ducked away. “I sailed all the way around the world. Took almost 18 months. I made many shorter trips, too. It was the most convenient way to get to New York or Boston, for that matter. Packets ran up and down the coast all the time.”  


“You sailed from here to Boston?”  


“There were no trains in my youth. Roads were muddy paths through the wilderness. Sailing was the only efficient, comfortable way to travel.”  


“Huh. I never though of that.” Wille frowned down at the drawings. “But it wasn’t very fast.”  


“No. I suppose ships are much faster now.” Barnabas frowned too, although the not the frightening expression Willie was used to. He just looked puzzled. “How long does it take to cross the Atlantic today?”  


“By air?”  


“Flying?” Barnabas laughed weakly. “We never even considered that possible. No, by ship.”  


Willie thought a moment, finding it odd that he knew something his well-read master did not. “Really fast ships can do it in four or five days. I think we usually took a week to ten days, depending on the weather.”  


“And flying?” Barnabas sounded doubtful.  


“I guess just a few hours. Less than a day. I’ve never been on an airplane.”  


They looked at each other, the two men, talking about ordinary things that interested both of them. It was, Willie thought, one of the oddest moment since he first realized he was the slave of an insane vampire. It was odd because it wasn’t odd.  


Barnabas shook his head. “So much,” he murmured softly. Willie could imagine the rest of the sentence.  


Wanting to cheer him up, if such a thing were possible, Willie said, “I could start working on that room with the ships next if you want.”  


Even before he finished the sentence, Willie knew he had made a terrible mistake. He could tell as Barnabas drew back, straightening his back rigidly, the lines of his face changing from man to monster in an instant.  


“That was my father’s office,” hissed the curse, eyes black and soulless. “The man who left me to rot for 150 years because he was afraid to do the one thing his son ever asked him to do out of love!”  


Terrified, Willie stepped back from the vampire, bumping into the chairs against the wall. “I”m sorry, Barnabas, I’m sorry. I didn’t think, I didn’t know. . “  


Barnabas silenced Willie with a sharp gesture. “Put this back in that room and shut the door and never mention it to me again.”  


“Sure, Barnabas. Right away.” He sprang forward and began to roll up the drawing of the Boreas.  


“And, Willie.”  


“Yes, Barnabas?”  


The man was back, for a flickering instant, the man who died so long ago and who had once sailed around the world on a four-masted schooner, “I’m sorry.” He said the words so softly Willie barely heard them as Barnabas strode out of the room.  


Rolling up the drawing slowly, Willie considered those last two words. He knew, for the first time, really knew, that it wasn’t Barnabas Collins who made his life a living hell. That Barnabas Collins was in hell himself. Caught inside the monster and as trapped as Willie.  


Willie picked up the snuffer and began to put out the candles.

July 30, 2017


End file.
